These Dreams of You

"This was the great test, whether there was a song the country could sing in common. Instead, more than ever it's a country of many songs all of them noisy, without a single melody that anyone cares about carrying. The country is a babel of not just melodies that no one shares but memory; and as Babel fractured language into thousands, the country is the sum total of a memory fractured into millions, not one of them a memory of the country as it actually has ever existed."

Steve Erickson is a hero of American fiction, and I just read his new novel, These Dreams of You, which is incredibly graceful, dreamy, ambitious, and so perfectly of this moment. Definitely recommended.

Let's Talk About Plot

LitReactor is a new site that features a magazine with publishing-related content, interviews (they just ran this great interview with Steve Erickson that is well worth the read) and book reviews, as well as online writing courses. Our own Joshua Mohr is going to be teaching a course and here's what it's all about:

Let's talk about plot. That skeleton holding your story together, so all your grand ideas and crazy characters and gut-punch sentences can shine. Every book needs a one, but let's be honest--plot is a pretty easy thing to lose.

That's why we've recruited best-selling author Joshua Mohr for our newest class, Plotlines: Crafting Powerful Story Progressions That Stay True To Character.

Josh will break down the various ways writers can construct a series of events with a laser focus that will keep readers glued to the page. Each weekly session will begin with written and video lectures, and students will have writing assignments to practice the new tactics they're taught. All of this will occur in our groundbreaking online classroom, an environment that encourages discussion and peer reviews.

In this class, Mohr will teach you:

How to start in the middle of the action

Effective ways to dangle bait for your reader

Creating characters who characterize themselves

How to write compelling dialogue

The four-week class starts on Feb. 20.

Click here to find more information about the class and its structure, and to register.

JOSHUA MOHR is the author of three novels, most recently Damascus, which the The New York Times called “Beat-poet cool.” He’s also written Some Things that Meant the World to Me, one of O Magazine’s Top 10 reads of 2009 and a San Francisco Chronicle best-seller, as well as Termite Parade, an Editors’ Choice on The New York Times Best Seller List. He teaches in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco.

Panglossing it Over

Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist, and Joshua S. Goldstein, a professor emeritus of international relations at the American University, wrote an Op-Ed piece in the Times entitled “War Really Is Going out of Style,” NYT, 12/17/11). For Pinker, the Op-Ed piece seems to be an extension of the argument that he makes in his recently published The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. The three reasons that Pinker and Goldstein give for the decline of war are 1) political 2) economic and 3)social. In terms of political boundaries, no one is really the winner. “Since shortly after World War II, virtually no borders have changed by force,” Pinker and Goldstein argue. Further, economic hegemony has been more effective than geographic invasion. “Today, wealth comes from trade, and war only hurts,” they continue. Lastly on the social front mankind has evolved. “Brutal customs that were commonplace for millennia have been largely abolished: cannibalism, human sacrifice, heretic-burning chattel slavery, punitive mutilation, sadistic executions.” The natural extension of Pinker and Goldstein’s argument is that benevolence has become naturally selective and that mankind has found a better way of dealing with its aggressive impulses, by making love not war to re-invoke the 60’s. The explosion of pornography might evidence the latter, if the majority of sites weren’t so involved with conquest and submission on an ontogenic basis. Not to be judgmental about playful sex, but the sex on Kink.com makes water boarding seem like a sport. The question is, are Pinker and Goldstein talking about the two new planets discovered orbiting the star Kepler 20 reported by Dennis Overbye in the Times (“Two Earth-Sized Planets Are Discovered, “ NYT, 12/20/11)? Do we occupy the same planet as these two eggheads ? They sound like Voltaire's Pangloss, whose reaction to a succession of brutalities, “all’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds," takes aim at another egghead named Leibnitz. What about the brutalities perpetrated by the Janjaweed militia in thee Sudan, the brutal dictatorship of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, whose fortunes are again on the rise due to a windfall from the country's diamond industry? OK Qaddafi was toppled in Libya and Mubarak in Egypt, but even the reports of Qaddafi’s brutal capture create suspicion about the prospects for peace in that troubled land and the recent accounts of the Egyptian military’s sexual humiliations of women protestors seem to show throw doubt on the old adage that “every cloud has a silver lining.” Make no mistake the lining of Mubarak regime was a military that controlled the economy of the country. We need turn no further than troubled Afghanistan if we want evidence of the fact that age old customs die slowly. Let the women with severed noses and burned faces testify to the progress of the human race. As for our so-called more advanced Western societies, who walked off with the shekels at MF Global and what made such a sterling institution as Goldman Sachs bet against the collateralized debt obligations it was offering its customers? And what about hazing at FAMU where the drum majors now must bang the drum slowly in mourning for a hard working 26 year old who was beaten to death? Go up to the South Bronx and watch the promoters of cock fights placing razors in the beaks of their contenders and then tell us about mankind tempering its aggressive instincts as two hapless birds run around with heads cut off. Happy Holidays!

[This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy's blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture.]

Q+A with Scott McClanahan

In early 2012 we signed a book by a writer named Scott McClanahan, entitled Crapalachia. The book begins with Scott as a 14 year old going to live with his Grandma Ruby and Uncle Nathan, who suffers from cerebral palsy, and charts the following formidable years of his life coming of age in rural West Virginia. Peopled by colorful characters and their quirky stories, Crapalachia interweaves folklore and area history, providing an ambitious and powerful snapshot of overlooked Americana.

Here's a brief brief excerpt:
"There were 13 of them. The children had names that ended in Y sounds. There was Betty and there was Annie and there was Stirley and there was Stanley and there was Leslie and there was Gary and there was Larry and there was Terry.
Ruby said: “I like names that end in Y.”
They all grew up in Danese, WV, eating blackberries for breakfast and eating blackberries for lunch and watching the snow come beneath the door in the wintertime."

And here be another:
"Then we read about how you build civilization. They built the Hawks Nest tunnel by digging a big ass hole in the side of a mountain. They used a bunch of poor people to dig it. A poor person means either their skin was dark or their accents were thick. That’s the best way to do anything—get a bunch of poor people to do it. So they cut and cut into the mountain but there was a problem. They didn’t wet the dust from the cut limestone—so the men developed silicosis. The men started dying by the tens and then the twenties and then the hundreds and then—the thousands? Since they were poor the company just buried them. There was an investigation a few years later but no one cared. They were poor people. The official stat was 476 but the truth is over a 1,000 of the 3,000 men lost their lives in a few short days."

I’ve read two (possibly three) of your story collections. They all feel personal, but Crapalachia feels like an entirely new level of personal. You – Scott McClanahan – exist in the story as the book begins when you’re 14 and go to live with your Grandma Ruby and Uncle Nathan, but you’re almost less of a character in this book as Ruby, Nathan, and your friend Bill really color the book. How did you know that you were prepared as a writer to approach something this deeply personal?

Boredom. I was getting ready to write a biography of my wife and all of her ex-boyfriends and she told me she would divorce me if I did (or sue me). I didn’t know how it would be living with someone who was actually suing you, but she was quite serious. So I decided to take some time and use the old McClanahan charm and convince her, and in the meantime I put together Crapalachia. I just ran out of other crap to write about. You can only write about how you passed a kidney stone and thought you were the new messiah only so many times.

Of course, I knew I was going to write about these people one day. So I wanted to try something ambitious. I wanted to see if I could resurrect the dead. I seriously wanted to see if I could bring back to life all of the people I’ve ever known. I’m not talking about metaphor here. I truly wanted to see if I could make my zombies emerge from their graves.

The Bill in the book is really two guys I know. I just decided to put them together and create one character. One of my friends named Bill murdered an old woman. One of my other friends suffered from OCD and we were roommates for a long time.

Nothing sells like sincerity, memory, murder, and obsessive compulsive disorder. I think Richard Nixon said that.

West Virginia and the history of its peoples is an integral part of this story. We read about the Pittston Coal Company calling a flood of mining waste that killed 125 people and decimated a town “an act of god,” or trapped miners eating their own shoelaces to try and survive. There’s also a story your Grandma tells you about your Grandpa’s reaction to his rejection by the mining company, after working for them for many years, for medical benefits. How much did it influence you growing up (and now, still, I suppose), reading and hearing about this ongoing story of oppression?

Oh, it’s had a huge influence. I think living in a place like this educates you in a completely different way from the rest of the country. You realize that they’re going to put it in your butt and keep it there. The only principle of politics my father ever told me was this. “The democrats are stealing just as much as the rest of the bastards, but there’s only one difference. The democrats just aren’t stealing from you.” He still votes a straight ticket without even looking at the ballot.

I know it’s trendy and modern and Dylan-like to say art and politics should be kept separate, but that’s just bullshit. I think calling yourself an artist or a writer is just a real good way to immediately marginalize who you are in this society. At the same time these “occupy kids” just seem like real jack-asses to me. Don’t they know that the leaders of the counter culture just wind up running multi-national corporations like Nike and have people working 20 hour shifts just to build your shitty IPHONE? Don’t they know that he who fucks nuns will later join the church?

Of course, it may sound cynical, but you know the definition of cynicism. Cynicism: A deep and profound understanding of human life.

Oral tall tales play a role in your work, and this book in particular. They grant Crapalachia this really vibrant texture of contrasts; on the one hand they lend your work this wonderful regional authenticity, while on the other hand they feel like magical realism seeped in Americana. Is this something that just sort of wiggles its way into your work?

I always get a little grumpy when I hear the word “oral” in relationship to writing. It always feels like an immediate way to connect a work to a “regional art.” Philip Roth is a regional artist, but he never gets called one. Babel, Singer, and Joyce are all full of folklore and oral elements but they’re always held up as great modernists. It’s the same with music as well. Merle Haggard is not a country singer. He is a master artist on the same level as Leonard Cohen, or Iggy Pop, or Nick Cave—but rural voices are always pushed aside and given labels.

Of course, I really love the sound of the voice. Most of the writing I come across now just feels like clunky prose to me. I don’t know how many novels I come across that feel like they were written by Cormac’s cousin, Barney. It’s all full of third person violence, apocalypse, descriptions of landscapes, murderous children, etc. Most of these books are from guys who are writing in sweaters their wives bought them for Christmas. You have to watch out for the Barney McCarthy’s of this world. I’m just trying to enter my own house justified.

I first heard of you when you interviewed Rudy Wurlitzer for Ain’t It Cool News back in ’09. You also have your own film production company in Holler Presents and have made a number of short films. How do you believe the two mediums inform one another for you as an artist? Or do they exist entirely separate of one another?

I think it’s the same. There’s a whole new type of cinema just waiting to happen where people are going to make movies about their bathroom behavior or sexual behavior. I guarantee the next Marlene Dietrich is going to be somebody’s kid sister or great aunt in the mountains of West Virginia. I’m still wanting to make an epic about chicken wings. I’m absolutely serious. I’ve been planning for years and I’m starting this year.

We also have a punk gospel band called The Holler Boys. We’re pretty interested in tag team wrestling as well.

And here’s a question that you asked Wurlitzer from that AICN interview that I’d be interested in hearing you answer: “Hal Ashby was an editor, Dylan a musician, Sam Shepard a playwright, [Wurlitzer is] a novelist, Robert Frank is primarily known as a photographer. In an age when people making movies typically get their references from comic books, TV shows and other movies, what is it about people coming from different mediums that make films more interesting? Do we need more of it in cinema as well as writing - fewer film schools and MFA programs?”

Oh yeah, it’s one of those things people hate talking about but it’s true. It really chaps their asses when you keep bringing it up—so I just keep bringing it up. It’s like reminding a friend they lost 60,000 dollars in a pyramid scheme.

MFA programs and film schools were created to sell stuff. The academy is one of the last places where people have to buy exactly what you tell them to buy. Colleges and universities also exist to allow “frumpy” middle aged people to have inappropriate relationships with more attractive younger people that would never happen outside the twisted confines of the classroom. We need more people doing things for the fun of it. I bet one of my heroes Rudy Wurlitzer still has fun.

Don’t we remember having fun anymore? I’m talking about just doing it for the sheer, hill, high, happy fun of it, rather than worrying about tenure or agents or crap like that. I run into artists everyday and they have no clue they’re artists. You should sit and listen to a bunch of nurses describe their day. The world is amazing if you just look around.

LA!

I had a great time in LA last week, where I got to sit on a panel at CalArts they dubbed 'No Need to Perish: Tenacity and Indie Publishing.' While in town, I was able to hang with some TDR folk, like The Emily Pullen, Anne-Marie Kinney (and her husband Abe, who designed the cover to Radio Iris), and Grace Krilanovich (and her sweet little baby girl). I also got to attend Trinie Dalton's launch party for Baby Geisha (!) at Family Bookstore last Saturday night (pic above).

A head's up for any LA folks: Trinie Dalton and Joshua Mohr will be reading together tonight, alongside Stephen Beachy, at Skylight Books at 7:30pm -- don't miss it!

Trinie Dalton! Pearls!

Join us, Saturday, February 4, at 7pm for the release of Trinie Dalton's book Baby Geisha at Family Books in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Magazine made the book a Critic's Pick and Interview Magazine said "[the stories in Baby Geisha] feel like brilliant sexual fairy tales on drugs. Dalton writes of self-discovery and sex with a knowing humility and humor."

I'll actually be in town for this one, so pop in and say hey!

Announcing: DIY Subscription

Starting this 30th of January, we are now beginning to offer you, dear reader, your own choice of subscription option. Because we believe you deserve that option. Because this is 'Merica.

Starting 30th January, we're pleased to offer our new DIY Subscription. You now have the choice of any 5 available or forthcoming titles for just $50.

(Yes, that's a good deal.)

Order now.

Reading Saved My Life

LA artist Ashkahn did a limited run of 100 "Reading Saved My Life" posters exclusively for Skylight Books. They're selling for $27!

RADIO IRIS excerpt

And so here, dear readers, is an excerpt of the first handful of chapters from Anne-Marie Kinney's much-anticipated debut novel, Radio Iris.


"Working for a company that might be called Kafka Ballard & Dickinson, bearing a kind of sonic witness to a world of static, Iris likes to listen the way some like to watch. Searching for home, she’s the passenger of her own voice. Anne-Marie Kinney’s Radio Iris is a novel of unsettling humor and elusive terror, a piercing loneliness and the strangeness of the banal, and a hushed power that grows in volume before your ears."
-Steve Erickson

"Radio Iris is a revelation, a whimsical, charming and beautifully observed novel about quotidian life. Anne-Marie Kinney's Iris is a contemporary version of Calvino's Marcovaldo, caught between the rich expression of her own humanity and the random demands of the workaday world."
-T.C. Boyle

"Radio Iris brings new shimmer and depth to the word 'sensory' - Iris's perceptions are both keen and open, so mysterious and grounded, and the book builds a narrative of mystery and longing with visceral, ringing precision."
-Aimee Bender

"In Radio Iris, Anne-Marie Kinney, introduces us to Iris Finch, a young woman of a new lost and lonely generation. With prose as pitch perfect as the Buddy Holly songs Iris loves, Kinney draws us into a world both familiar and quotidian and unfathomable and harrowing."
-Bruce Bauman


Anne-Marie Kinney's work has appeared in Black Clock, Indiana Review, and Keyhole, and has been performed by Los Angeles’s Word Theatre. Radio Iris is her first novel.

Spring/Summer 2012 Catalog

O 2011, Where Did You Go? A recap of sorts.

2011 just blew past and we thought we'd take a moment to slow it down and share some of our most memorable TDR moments from the year.

We'd love to hear from other folks, too, readers or authors as to what some of their favorite times from the past year were, whether with our books or others, so please chime in!

Here are some of those moments we'll remember, in no particular order.

Barbara Browning appearing with Keren Ann at Barnes & Noble's Upstairs at the Square.
Barbara's debut novel, The Correspondence Artist, inspired Largehearted Boy to declare the book "one of the true literary breakthroughs of our young century," and thankfully we have this utterly fantastic video of her in conversation with Katherine Lanpher at a joint event with Keren Ann.


Grace Krilanovich's The Orange Eats Creeps makes the editors' shortlist for The Believer Book Awards.
"Grace Krilanovich’s first book is a steamy cesspool of language that stews psychoneurosis and viscera into a horrific new organism—the sort of muck in which Burroughs, Bataille, and Kathy Acker loved to writhe."
And while it didn't win, we're certain it made an impression.

Michael Schaub reviews Jay Neugeboren's You Are My Heart and Other Stories at Kirkus.
"[Neugeboren] might not be as famous as some of his compeers, like Philip Roth or John Updike, but it's becoming increasingly harder to argue that he's any less talented. Neugeboren's new short story collection serves as a convincing piece of evidence of the author's rare talent... dazzlingly smart and deeply felt... Jay Neugeboren is music to our ears."
That's why it was memorable, a better appreciation for this acclaimed author could not have been written.

Francis Levy pisses off Brazil.
The publication of Francis Levy's satirical second novel, Seven Days in Rio, inspired the Village Voice to declare the work "the funniest American novel since Sam Lipsyte's The Ask" and others to praise this "incredibly elaborate and well-crafted satire." There were voices of dissent, such as Brazilian government officials quoted in O Globo, the most prominent daily newspaper in the country, saying they would demand an official apology for the book's publication.
This would have to win for most surreal happening for us of 2011.

Roadtripping with Joshua Mohr.
We were thankful to be able to convince Joshua Mohr to tour the midwest for the third book of his that we published, Damascus, which led to us eating this Chicago-style pizza:

Josh reading in a chapel at Capital University:

And in a basement at Mac's Backs in Cleveland:

While some super-cool things happened with Damascus, such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times reviews, and the USA Today year-end mention, the most memorable part of the publication for me will be this trip, the camaraderie, talking books and writing and everything else with a dear friend.

Getting some hometown love from The Columbus Dispatch.
When you work out of your house, it can get kind of lonely, and so it was great to get some local print from our hometown paper that allowed us to open our doors and share what we do with our neighbors and community. Plus, it was really wonderfully written.

Farhad Manjoo as Chuck Norris

I spent last week with a laundrylist of childhood diseases my daughter brought home from kindergarten, heavily medicated and nursing myself with unhealthy quantities of Hulu. I probably saw the commercial for the World of Warcraft videogame that featured Chuck Norris a couple dozen times, and read Farhad Manjoo's smarmy follow-up to his universally despised Slate column. With his cocky yet stock Google-researched voice, I realized that Manjoo was positing himself as some omniscient guru. Not dissimilar to the mythic figure cut by Chuck Norris in jokes. Seen in this light, I began to view Manjoo more as an undeserving knucklehead with a megaphone and mostly harmless. And that’s my prescription for how to successfully quit loathing Farhad Manjoo.

I started writing something comparing the two (Farhad and Chuck), which evolved into a more elaborate appreciation for bookstores. The medication wore off with many of the loose-ends unresolved, and I need to work on other things than this amusement so I'm just throwing it up on our blog for anyone to check out who may get a kick out of it.

Independent Bookselling Will Survive Only Because Farhad Manjoo Allows It to Survive

On December 13, in the thrall of the zombie daze of holiday shopping, Farhad Manjoo, Slate's technology columnist published an article deriding independent bookstores as “some of the least efficient, least user-friendly, and most mistakenly mythologized local establishments you can find.” After a maelstrom of criticism and name-calling (from amongst others, Salman Rushdie), he backtracked somewhat with a piece on December 21, saying 'Independent Bookstores Are Not Doomed,' with the self-righteous subtitle, “Here's how they can fight back against Amazon.” (Not, 'Here's how bookstores are fighting back against Amazon.') In other words, it would be possible for independent bookstores to survive after all... if they heeded the sage wisdom of Farhad Manjoo. And Farhad Manjoo could win a staring contest with his eyes closed.

What was especially irksome about Manjoo's side-step was that he didn't bother speaking with a single bookseller to find out what they were doing to combat digital retail benefits, or how bookstores were already using technology to enhance a shopper's experience. To read Manjoo, you'd think the threat of Amazon on the book trade was newly born, rather than being a credible danger that surviving bookstores have dealt with for the past decade or longer. As someone who finds bookstores difficult to use (as Manjoo admitted in his initial piece), one might think that speaking with someone who operates one, or shops at one, would be in order.

Rather, Manjoo devotes the crux of his latter Amazon prescription to smartphone apps, which I'm actually thankful for, that rather than elaborating on his previous preposterous generalizations the tech guru stuck to technology. He states in closing:

“...apps will become just as important to local retailers as websites are now. If you own a store, I’d suggest you start thinking about building such an app. Right now, Amazon is stealing your customers. This is a way to fight back.”

Rome wasn't built in a day because they didn't ask Farhad Manjoo for help.

There is an indie bookstore app available through Indiebound that allows shoppers to “browse indie bookseller recommendation lists,” download ebooks from independent bookstores, find indie bookstores in their area (in addition to other locally-owned businesses), as well as search and order books. Apparently this tool didn't show up during the exhaustive research Manjoo conducted while crafting the brunt of the argument in his well-informed article. But then again, Farhad Manjoo doesn't scroll with a mouse, he uses a lion.

There is an unfortunate representation by some media of bookstores as places that are adorable and cuddly and demanding of our charity, like a kitten awaiting adoption. I found both of Manjoo's articles to be exceptionally condescending and offensive, and I'm not even a bookseller. Even Will Doig's rebuttal of Manjoo's piece on Salon seemed to hang its hat on the argument that bookstores are an invaluable thread of our cultural fabric and therefore deserve our support, as though we wouldn't otherwise shop there. Which makes me slightly queasy; just because store owners don't have a jazzy title like mortgage consultant doesn't mean they aren't businesspeople. People are choosing the experience of shopping at an independent bookstore, but they are also receiving a service. It isn't a toss-up between cutting a check to a non-profit or shopping at that cute bookstore on the corner.

A recent article in the New York Times reports that holiday bookstore sales are up considerably nationwide over 2010, with R.J. Julia bookstore in Madison, Connecticut, boasting a whopping 30% increase.

Ebook sales statistics abound and I gloss over them warily, preferring to stick with our own internal numbers. At Two Dollar Radio, less than 4% of total per-unit sales are ebooks, which equates to less than 2% of gross income. We have had ebooks fail to break even in sales, which rarely happens for us in print. To give a sample of a recent publication from 2011, a period during which “ebook sales rose 81%,” a book which received reviews from large media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Book Review, and several others, sold 3,000 print copies. During that same window, the book sold less than 50 ebooks.

We're becoming increasingly conscious of the fact that the readership of our press and the readership of our authors does not primarily reside in the ebook market. If there is a future for us there, I can't yet spy its promise on the horizon. It is my hardheaded belief that the sum contribution ebooks have made to the book trade and the publishing profession as a whole has been to devalue our product and our livelihoods, and all Amazon is doing is upselling gadgets while attempting to modernize their archaic delivery method. The single greatest champion of small presses isn't Amazon or online retailers, but independent bookstores.

Much of the pity bookstores receive is induced as a result of Amazon receiving unfair tax benefits. However, what bookstores deserve even more than our communal pity is a level playing field. It is outlandish that Amazon, a corporation that has imparted untold damage to our culture and our communities since their inception through their brutish business principles, is still permitted to operate in such a nefarious manner.

It's difficult to put into words the value I believe independent bookstores possess, as it undoubtedly is for so many others, which is why we resort to nostalgia and whimsy. I shop at independent bookstores not out of some social obligation, but selfishly, because I want to, because the package they offer is indispensable. I imagine the same belief is shared by those others I see in the stores as well.


* All Chuck Norris jokes borrowed from chucknorrisfacts.com.

Ricardo Cavolo + Jeff Faerber

Ricardo Cavolo (work above), the Spanish artist whose work graces the cover to Karolina Waclawiak's forthcoming How To Get Into the Twin Palms (July 2012), has new artwork up at his site, as well as some super-cool tee-shirts and posters available for purchase. Check it out!

In the days of yore, we used to spotlight artists on our website, as well as bands. One of those artists is Jeff Faerber, who has completed a cool series of NYC landscapes done on metrocards (below).

Big Ups, Myron McVeigh!

A fellow named Myron McVeigh is the latest member of our tattoo club. Myron got inked by Katie Sellergren of Mt Idy Tattoo in Montrose, Iowa.

"My name is Myron McVeigh. I am 31 years old and enjoy nature and reading. I was born and raised in Iowa. I also build acoustic guitars as a hobby. You can see some of my work on my facebook page, Facebook.com/woodenguitars. I work for a heating and air company doing custom Sheet metal. I enjoy moonshine and appalachian folklore. I also collect tattoos. I have decided to join the tattoo club because I enjoy books and have enjoyed Two Dollar radio's books thus far. Plus it's a good excuse to get a tattoo!"

Big Ups, Dan Smith!

"My name is Dan Smith and I am from Seattle, WA. I work for the City of Redmond and recently graduated from Washington State University. I served in the Marine Corps for six years prior to settling with my wife and our son in the Seattle suburb of Lake Stevens, WA. With all of the rainy days we have here in the northwest, I always seem to find myself curled up with a book from Two Dollar Radio.

"I first heard about Two Dollar Radio from my older cousin, Joshua Mohr. While we did not spend a lot of time together growing up (He is much older than I), I have always had a great deal of respect for him. Also, I must admit, a little envious of his musical and literary talents. Since the publishing of Some Things That Meant The World To Me, I have told anyone that will listen about his astute abilities to craft an imaginative tale. With the tattoo club, I think there is no better way to get out there and spread the word about all of the great literary works available from Two Dollar. With the publishing of Damascus, I felt it was time to put words into action and get my radio tat!

"I had this tattoo drawn up and inked in by Richard Choptij of Tattoo Nemesis in Lake Stevens, WA. It took a little longer than expected to heal, but worth the wait! Now life truly is looking bright and sunny... Now if only I could win the lotto."